What I Meant to Ask: responding to Linda Pastan's
Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

by Julie R. Enszer
Poem: Why Are Your Poems So Dark?
Poet: Linda Pastan
Published in: The Poetry Foundation (Vol. 182, No. 5, August 2003)

She lives near me. I don't know how I know that, but I do. I do know how I know that; I don't want to tell you. You may label me a stalker. A freaky stalker. You would be right. That doesn't change the facts, though. She lives near me.

I imagine myself driving around the beltway to her house. I haven't found the exact route, or at least that is what I am going to tell you. Still I can imagine driving from my house to hers. Without traffic, it is only twenty-five minutes; with traffic it could take more than an hour. If I were a stalker, I would drive the route many times and just hover near the final turn on her street. Then, I would turn away. I haven't done that. Eventually, I might turn on her street and drive slowly by her house; I assume she lives in a house. I don't know. I haven't driven there.

I am not, as you might suspect, a stalker. I am, however, obsessed. I am obsessed because I want to tell her, yes.

Yes. Yes, the moon is dark too, most of the time . Yes, the moon is dark, too, and we miss it terribly those days it is effaced from the sky. Those are the days after our menses, when the moon is not in the sky, when there is no light at night. Our womb is barren but relining; there is much to see in the world on the days that the moon is dark but there is no nighttime illumination. We wait for the moon to creep out again. Sliver to slice to crescent to half to full. The moon is dark, too, most of the time, but when it is light, oh, we are happy, so happy.

Like the pages blemished with ink stains. They are happy, too. We recognize the letters or tiny brush strokes or imprints from metal on ribbon or hard driving electrons. We see those dark stain s and we recognize them and we are happy. Then, Linda, it is not so dark. It is not so dark when we have words, your words, your blemished pages. You make us happy and it is not so dark.

We greet them with joy like the white page greets the ink, like the blank screen greets the keypad command, we are joyful, like when we reach the third verse, G-d said, “There shall be light.” It is so dark that we can barely read the first two verses but somehow it is if they illumine themselves, “In the beginning, G-d created...”

Here, though, is where I quibble with you Linda; my G-d is not a he. I know it may mark me indelibly as feminist to you and cause you to eschew my visit, unannounced, unexpected. You may dismiss my concerns as trifling, but still I will agree with you: When G-d demanded light , she didn't banish darkness.

She. She. She. The moon, the paper, the light, the darkness, can't you see the feminine embedded right here in the divine?

I could explain it to you, if I came to visit. If I arrived at your door one day unannounced, I would say, G-d is a she! She invented the ebony and the crows. They are dark, and they, too, are happy. Ebony and crows : those are two of her favorites, the rare and the commonplace. She invented it just like she marked a cheekbone that would become one of your favorites. Does that make you happy? The dark mark on the cheekbone of one, may I presume, one you love?

That is not what I would ask. Of course, you are right. I mean to ask , not why are your poems so dark, but why are you so sad ? Though it would seem a bit forward for me to plunge right into that question standing here on your front porch after knocking so tentatively on your door. It seems that perhaps I should start with an effusion of “HiMynameisandIloveyourworkandIliveintheneighborhoodwellatleastnearbyandhowareyouand didImentionIloveyourwork?”

After all of that, if you were still standing there at the doorway of your home, I could ask you, "Do you love the one with the small mole on the left cheekbone?"

Then I could ask, why are you so sad? But I know what you would tell me. I know, Linda, I have asked the moon. I have seen it too.

So have you? This is what I meant to ask.

 

Julie Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist living in Maryland.
She has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women,
Room of One's Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review,
and the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly. Her work is forthcoming in
Poetica and the Red Mountain Review. For money, she runs a small
anti-nuclear non-profit organization; for love, she quilts and sews and
embroiders and makes hand-made paper. You can learn more
about her work at http://www.JulieREnszer.com.